Yet another Andhra techie shot dead in US

Hyderabad, Feb 4 (IANS) Rudraraju Sudheer Kumar, a mechanical engineer from Andhra Pradesh, has been killed in Atlanta in the US, family sources said. This is the third such killing of a techie from the Indian state in the US in less than a month.Kumar, 31, an engineer with Toyota Motors, was killed in Atlanta Tuesday night. According to information reaching his family, he was shot at by unidentified people for refusing to part with money.

Kumar belonged to Gurumala village in Sakhinetipalli mandal of the coastal district of West Godavari. He went to the US in 2005 after completing studies mechanical engineering.

He paid a brief visit here to celebrate ‘Pongal’ with his parents and returned to the US last month.

He is the third techie from the state to die in less than a month in the US. Muthyala Purushottam, 27, a software engineer from Anantapur district, was found dead in his flat in Indianapolis Jan 20. He was working for Triton Infotech.

Akshay Vishal, 26, a software engineer from Hyderabad, was shot dead by unidentified people in Little Rock in Arkansas Jan 13.

Kumar’s killing is the ninth case of students and professionals from Andhra Pradesh being killed in the US during the last 14 months. Arpana B. Jinaga, 24, a software engineer in EMC Corporation in Seattle, was found murdered in her apartment Nov 3 last year.

T. Soumya Reddy, a 23-year-old pursuing Master’s in electrical engineering at the Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville campus, was found dead in a car near a lake in Chicago in September. Her cousin Vikram Reddy, 27, who was a software engineer in Chicago, was also found shot dead nearby.

Srinivas, a post-graduate medical student from Karimnagar, was found murdered in Pennsylvania in March.

A. Kirankumar and K. Chandrasekhar Reddy, both PhD students, were shot dead by intruders in their apartment at Louisiana University in December 2007.